Ed Smiley's Tech Blog

Ohm's law holds down to atomic scale - physicsworld.com

2012-01-05T14:05:00.000-08:00

Ohm's law holds down to atomic scale - physicsworld.com: "Ohm's law holds down to atomic scale
Jan 5, 2012

Phosphorus atoms make a tiny wire on silicon
A new technique for embedding atomic-scale wires within crystals of silicon has revealed that Ohm's law can hold true for wires just four atoms thick and one atom tall. The result comes as a surprise because conventional wisdom suggests that quantum effects should cause large deviations from Ohm's law for such tiny wires. Paradoxically, the researchers hope the finding will aid the development of quantum computers."

'via Blog this'

Maybe Amazon's Favorite Quote

2011-11-22T14:01:00.000-08:00

Lucy Larcom Quotes - BrainyQuote: "If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it.
Lucy Larcom
"

'via Blog this'

Kilobots leave the nest | R&D Mag

2011-11-22T13:49:00.000-08:00

Kilobots leave the nest | R&D Mag:

Swarm of tiny, collaborative robots will be made available to researchers, educators, and enthusiasts

Computer scientists and engineers at Harvard University have developed and licensed technology that will make it easy to test collective algorithms on hundreds, or even thousands, of tiny robots.

'via Blog this'

Smart swarms of bacteria inspire robotics researchers | R&D Mag

2011-11-22T13:46:00.000-08:00

Smart swarms of bacteria inspire robotics researchers | R&D Mag: "When an individual bacterium finds a more beneficial path, it pays less attention to the signals from the other cells. But at other times, upon encountering challenging paths, the individual cell will increase its interaction with the other cells and learn from its peers."

'via Blog this'

Apple Patent Uses 3D Gestures to Control an iPad | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

2011-11-18T16:45:00.000-08:00

Apple Patent Uses 3D Gestures to Control an iPad | Gadget Lab | Wired.com:

"Forget relying solely on touch to control your Apple device. On future iPads, you may be able to control your tablet from across the room using 3D gestures, such as a swirl or swipe of the hand."

Hey, I wonder if satire counts as "prior art"... ... How about the infamous Gmail April Fools Day post?
'via Blog this'

On Google +

2011-07-09T00:32:00.000-07:00

On Google Plus with my CR-48.
Can't get better than that.

Acer and Samsung Chrome Notebooks Announced – Available June 15th

2011-05-11T13:13:00.000-07:00

Yes! Google has announced two new netbooks from Samsung and Acer . These will be the first to market and will begin selling in June this year. Best Buy and Amazon will begin selling these devices online on the 15th of June.....

Read the whole article:
Acer and Samsung Chrome Notebooks Announced – Available June 15th
Posted by Nigel Mabandla On May 11, 2011

Amazon now has a Chrome laptop landing site, the Chromebook Store.

Mathematicians Develop Stress Test For Global Economy

2011-04-26T18:02:00.001-07:00

If China suffers a recession, how badly will the rest of the world be hit? Mathematicians have used network theory to calculate the answer

Read the article on: Technology Review.

CR-48 Improving

2011-03-23T21:56:00.000-07:00

Seems to have fixed the audio problem. Also am able to use Muro, which is a pretty complicated graphic app.

I love its bootup time and battery life. If I am not processing art images (it is terrible for that) it is my favorite of my three laptops for social networking, blogging, reading news.

Official Google Blog: An update from the Chairman

2011-01-20T15:59:00.000-08:00

Official Google Blog: An update from the Chairman

Shake up at Google.

Google To Ship Next Batch Of CR-48, You Could Be The Lucky One | Muktware

2011-01-19T13:26:00.000-08:00

Google To Ship Next Batch Of CR-48, You Could Be The Lucky One | Muktware

Garbled Audio After Latest Update: Possible high resolution timerfix.

2011-01-19T12:53:00.000-08:00

Benson Leung of chromium.org says:

Hi All, We have identified the high resolution timer issue, and a patch will be pushed soon. Thanks for your patience and help, everyone! Benson

http://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/group/chromium-os-discuss/browse_thread/thread/388ef5aa5a6d2312

CR-48 Audio Problems

2011-01-14T11:35:00.000-08:00

I was able to consistently produce audio streaming problems using the WeatherBig app.
What gives? Anybody see this one?

I was able to duplicate this on the CR-48 with two different streaming audio sites.
1) install WeatherBug.
2) Install Santa Cruz CA, and Palo Alto CA as two tabs
3) To test, next do a cold boot.
4) Go to audio streaming site and start audio
5) Audio works fine
6) Now go to apps tab and got to WeatherBug.
7) Select the Palo Alto tab.
The audio turns into crackly sound and becomes unintelligible within 30 seconds.

To fix you need to close the WeatherBug tab and do a cold reboot.

I have already reported this to Google.
The sites I saw this on are:
The Freakenomics podcast on the NY Times.
KGO 810 radio listen live.

Short overview of the Chrome Notebook

2011-01-08T11:36:00.000-08:00

If anybody is confused by all this CR-48 business:

Hacking your CR-48 Profile Photo

2011-01-08T00:17:00.000-08:00

You can use Piknik to do it, as outlined here:
http://www.thechromesource.com/replacing-your-profile-picture-on-the-cr-48/

However, that's pretty boring!

Alternatively, the profile photo exists on your hard drive at /home/chronos. This file is called yourname@gmail.com.png. If you have jailbroken your machine, and you downloaded a photo from the web, it will be in /home/chronos/user/Downloads. (You can get into the full shell from crosh by typing shell, and if you need superuser privileges, sudo su.)

You can just copy the file, renaming it as a .png file with your email that you use for logging in. I was able to download a png file of a cartoon character and then, change my photo in this way.

Warning: I am not sure what it does if it finds no yourname@gmail.com.png. .png file, but a yourname@gmail.com.jpg. instead, or what happens if the .png file has dimensions that it doesn't like.

I suggest you back up your original photo, before you try this.

How would you change the Cr-48?

2011-01-07T10:36:00.000-08:00

How would you change the Cr-48?

Replies on ChromeOSLounge.....

According to jbills the notorious trackpad issues may be due to the device driver.....

ProQuest acquires ebrary

2011-01-06T10:57:00.000-08:00

I am now working for ProQuest.

ebrary has just been acquired by ProQuest and is now a ProQuest division. http://www.ebrary.com/corp/newspdf/ebrary_ProQuest_Acquisition.pdf

CR-48 Mad Scientist Experiment

2011-01-04T10:28:00.000-08:00

Now that I have jailbroken the CR-48, I downloaded Firefox for Linux, copied the .bz file to a new mozilla folder I created off my home directory, unpackaged it using tar, and attempted to run it.

The firefox launch script requires the Bourne shell, but I haven't been successful in getting it to launch yet, even after chown, chmod and sudo su. I suspect that there are missing libraries, but I have been too lazy to investigate yet.

I know I don't need Firefox. Chrome is my favorite browser. However I think it would be neat if I can get this to work. As a developer, you might need a tool only available in some other browser.

Anyway, I was also able to learn about my home directory, the file structure of the special chromeos user, where the downloads go, etc.

How To Root Or Jailbreak Google Chrome Cr-48 Notebook? [Developer Mode]

2011-01-04T10:20:00.000-08:00

"Rooting or jailbreaking lets you get full access of your device. Rooting most of the devices is not easy and takes quite an effort before you can get root access. However rooting or jailbreaking the GoogleChrome Cr-48 Notebook is as easy as pushing a button! "

How To Root Or Jailbreak Google Chrome Cr-48 Notebook? [Developer Mode]

This is a very clear article describing what it takes to jailbreak a CR-48. Locating the black tape is the most difficult part, so the photos are a big help. (The comments folks leave on these jailbreaking articles are a crack up. Lots of people swear the switch is not there--it's under black tape on a black laptop!)

A couple of things of note. This process will wipe your local data. So if you haven't shaved, are hung over, or have your hair in curlers, etc. note you will lose your original attractive photo--it will ask you for a new photo and you have to set up starting over again. (My photo is now with bed hair and in a bathrobe.) Second, the switch takes 15 minutes, so don't try it if you have no battery time left without plugging it in.

(Remember, the whole concept is to get away from the idea of local data.)

Once you are in jailbreak mode, other then the nag screen that you have to hit Ctrl-D to bypass, your Chrome browser will work as before.

The limited ChromeOS shell, can be accessed using Ctrl-Alt-T as before. You can alternate between the shell and the Chrome browser as before by using Alt-Tab. (If you have multiple shells open this will also work. I've loaded over 20 or thirty shells at the same time.)

However, now you can go to a bash shell within the ChromeOS shell by typing "shell" (Ctrl-D or "exit" once takes you back). You can also get to a Bourne shell by typing "sh" within the bash shell.

Yes. This is an official feature. See the related article at chromestory:

http://chromestory.com/2010/12/rooting-or-jailbreaking-chrome-os-is-an-official-feature-in-chrome-notebook-cr48/

The End of an Era – 1935 to 2010 « Steve McCurry's Blog

2010-12-31T23:51:00.000-08:00

The End of an Era – 1935 to 2010 « Steve McCurry's Blog

Yesterday Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas, the last lab on the planet to process Kodachrome, stops developing the iconic film forever. When Kodak stopped producing the film last year, they gave him the last roll. When he finished shooting the final frames, he hand-delivered it to Parsons. Here are a few of those last 36 frames.

Looking at Windows CE Sylvania Netbook

2010-12-30T23:54:00.000-08:00

Oddly enough, I was just contacted to evaluate this puppy. By my daughter. If it doesn't cut the mustard she can take it back.

Sort of a coincidence in that it is contending for a somewhat similar space to the CR-48. (see last post )

Her boyfriend got it for her to use in her college classes. I have to admit it's kind of cute, it weighs about the same as an iPad. Clearly it was attractive in that it was very lightweight, very inexpensive (about $99), and looked like it might have minimum functionality, which I took to be accessing the web, editing documents, and hopefully, printing them out. Her finger tips are thinner than mine so the keyboard would work for her. (I my finger tips are about 1 1/2X the width of the virtual keyboard on an iPod Touch or iPhone, so little keys don't work for me very well.)

So I evaluated it by getting it set up to access our wireless, connecting to the internet, doing Google searches, playing a couple of flash videos, attempting to run two applications at the same time (like open a document while running a web browser) cutting and pasting text. Also checking for stability, and upgradability. "Dad, the Internet Explorer on this looks awful old." Hmm.

OK it was fairly painful to set up the home wireless connection. When I did get connected, and it locked up for any reason, and I had to reboot, often the wireless connection would fail, I'd press connect, and it would say connected but IE wouldn't get the message, so I'd have to reboot again. Since it locked up three or four or so times in the hour or two I spent with it (about the total for the last two weeks of pretty heavy use of the CR-48--which isn't even a released product) losing your internet connection was always a possibility.

I could edit a document and save it off in an older Office .doc format using the CE version of Wordpad. I did not try to test if I could directly connect a USB printer. You should close your browser; running two applications at the same time almost invariably pulls up a you are almost out of memory what now? dialog. I am not sure what value the task bar has if you don't have enough memory to run two applications at the same time.

By the way the documentation suggests that you not even attempt to use a printer, and instead e-mail your documents to another computer.

As an alternative, I thought it might be really cool to use Google Docs instead, Unfortunately, Google Docs nearly locked up, and informed me that my browser was inadequate to the task.

However, WinCE is not really designed to update, so you are stuck with a cell phone style version of IE 6.0. (Interestingly going to the Windows Update site locks up the little critter.) So there is no way to use Google docs. (A Chrome OS laptop, with Google web print and Google docs would probably actually meet her requirements).

I was able to run one out of two flash animations. I'd also have to admit that the CE user interface looks like it was designed by somebody who designs North Korean worker apartments, compared to a Mac, and iPad, or even Windows 7.

Well, I told her she could decide, so I gave her a report card for it and she could check for herself.

Weight A
Boot speed A
Stability F
Multitasking F
Write Document B-
Wireless D
Web C-
Upgradable/Up to Date F

She's going to return it.

CR-48

2010-12-13T22:29:00.000-08:00

Went to:
HTML5 Tech Talk
Monday, December 13, at 6:00pm PST.
Doors to be opened at 5:30pm and you needed to reserve a place.
It was curious, but after I registered, I kept getting requests to make sure I was really attending.

Google's Crittenden Campus, Olympus Mons Tech Talk
1400 Crittenden Lane
Mountain View, CA, 94043

Anyway, I got there, I was curious about HTML5, Mike West did a tech talk on IndexedDB a web based NOSQL, here are the slides. They did a quick update on Chrome, and then came the Oprah moment:

Google Chrome OS Notebook Cr-48s for everybody!

So I got into the invitation only beta!

And yes, I have posted this using the little guy, and moved some of my posts from my old blog to here. Only thing that was really painful was highlighting text with the track pad, really painful, I started using arrow keys to do it instead.

Working at ebrary

2010-05-12T00:06:00.000-07:00

I'm working at ebrary now. Here's some information on them:

Reading PDFs Online with No Download
Integrating ebrary content

Review of A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel

2010-04-16T00:08:00.000-07:00

< A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel And Einstein by Palle Yourgrau

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
In the annals of twentieth century physical and mathematical thought there were a series of crises, and as a result of those crises, in many cases some kind of limitative result was derived.

Two of the figures involved in these results became deep friends in their late years at Princeton: the voluble Einstein and the strange reclusive Gödel, and this book dwells on the development of their philosophical views and the outcomes of some of that thought in the late work of Kurt Gödel.

Gödel, it is to be remembered, demonstrated a general approach that separated the concept of truth from the concept of provability from a set of axioms: every completely formal mathematical system possesses at least one true statement that cannot be demonstrated by it, regardless of what modifications you attempt. Gödel was extremely dubious of logical positivism, and essentially deriving his outlook from Plato, regarded formal methods as merely a rigorous way of arriving at fundamental, prexisting, intuitions of truth.

Einstein, more familiar to most readers, produced a geometrical interpretation of space and time not existing independently, but wholly determined by measurement, matter and energy.

Gödel became extremely interested in the aspect of time as psychological time, time that flows, and asked the question as to whether the intuition of time was something that should prove as reliable and fundamental as the notion of truth. Or was Plato's hint to be followed that time was not truly to be taken as real?

Gödel in exploring Einstein's general relativity came to the conclusion that time was an illusion, at least in the sense that we intuit it. Or perhaps one might say, it lacked the power and generality to become a fundamental intuition. It is odd, in that in his master work, his Incompleteness Theorem, he rigorously demonstrated the generality of the intuition of truth; yet in his work on relativity, he demonstrated deep flaws in the intuition of time.

Background: Unlike special relativity, general relativity allows the large scale distribution of matter to determine "average" or in some sense privileged observers at any region of space and time, in which it could be said time is to pass.

Gödel proceeded to
1. artificially imagine a universe in which the large scale distribution of matter is rotating about an axis
2. demonstrate that an observer could follow a path in which they would end up eventually in their own path
3. argue that in such a world time in the sense of a linear flow that we can intuit is an invalid concept
4. argue that if time cannot be validly applied to all possible worlds it has no true validity in any.

It may be noted that Gödel invented a totally new and completely valid solution of Einstein's field equations, but with very odd conditions clearly not followed by our actual universe. The argument from complete necessity in all possible worlds, may strike the reader as odd, or may seem to recall strange resemble to the Ontological Proof of the existence of God (Gödel played with formalizing the Ontological Proof, but never published it.)

I gave 3 stars to this book because (I have read the monograph on the Incompleteness Theorem, so trust me on this) I thought some of the explanations for the general reader, especially the Incompleteness Theorem were a little poor. It did give a very brilliant portrayal of Gödel's philosophical concerns. I also not that this is the non-technical companion to a much more rigorous exploration of Gödel's war on time, also by Yourgrau.

View all my reviews >>

Fractal patterns spotted in the quantum realm - physicsworld.com

2010-02-11T00:12:00.000-08:00

Fractal patterns spotted in the quantum realm - physicsworld.com.

Hacking your cell phone (for techies)

2010-02-08T00:17:00.000-08:00

Dude (or dudette) where's my pictures?

Some cell phones don't give you access to your pictures, videos etc., other than to run up data charges by sending them. If you want to get access to them, there are tricks you can use. This is for the fairly techie user, so it is just an example. My laptop is running Vista,and my cell phone is a cheap LG VX5500 but the principles should work on other systems.

Obviously if you have a smart phone, you probably don't need to do all this. But if you are smart and your phone is dumb, or if you are just a general mad scientist type, read on.

1. Assuming you have a mini-USB port on your phone, get a cable for it. If this doesn't work, it will at least let you charge your cell phone from your computer.

2. Plug the mini-USB cable into the computer and the cell phone and turn each on.

3. In Vista, it should auto detect and install a device driver for you. If that doesn't work, you can Google for the driver for your phone and install it yourself.

4. Ho hum. OK you are set? you should go into Device Manager (or equivalent) and confirm that it sees the device. You will not see it in the file system (e.g. Computer, My Computer etc.).

5. Go to www.bitpim.com and download BitPim. It supports:
Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7
Linux RPM
MacOS X 10.3+ (Universal)

6. If you are the type that likes to ask for directions or use manuals, you may want to read the online help first. (Nah.)

7. Figure out what model of phone you have. Set up BitPim accordingly. You don't really need to know what port you are on, you can choose autodetect.

7. You can select an advanced option to access the cell phone's file system. You should be safe as long as you are only doing downloads and don't muck with the files on the phone itself. (If something bad happens, don't blame me, go back to the store and say "it just stopped working".)

8. On most of the Verizon LG phones, the user media files are in subfolders of the brew folder, you just have to explore around a bit and find them (buncha files ending in .JPG!).

9. Right button click and select the option to make a zip file backup. You can also find things like your calendar, text messages and address book and back them up as well. Here's what I see on BitPim on my phone:

Here is my cellphone's filesystem in BitPim!
The picture folder (directory) is highlighted.
Right button click on a directory and it offers to make a zip file on your local file system.

If you double click on any file it will bring it up in a HEX editor.

Here is my cellphone's filesystem in BitPim!
The picture folder (directory) is highlighted.
Right button click on a directory and it offers to make a zip file on your local file system.

If you double click on any file it will bring it up in a HEX editor.

Here's a guide that gives you some information about the common locations for many VERIZON cell phones. I can't vouch for it, as I don't own every damn phone listed. But if can give you some good ideas where the goodies are, even if you have a different model.
http://mark.cdmaforums.com/FileLocs.htm

10. Unzip the files and do what you want.

As I side note, I actually took, and downloaded a pixelated photograph from my cell phone, and blew it up and it was actually accepted in a juried photography show. (The image quality gave it a somewhat impressionist quality.

Note: this is for informational purposes only, and I take no responsibility for the accuracy of this information.

Java Kicks Ruby on Rails in the Butt | Ruby-On-Rails

2010-01-19T00:37:00.000-08:00

Java Kicks Ruby on Rails in the Butt | Ruby-On-Rails.
A nice presentation, although the Englsih grammar is a little sketchy. I did think he handwaved a bit about migrations, in that the pseudo-sql in ruby is what is supposed to generate the actual SQL. Nice summary of model driven development, though.

The Principal Principle

2009-11-24T00:43:00.000-08:00

is it just me?

A principle is a law or rule.
A principal is a chief or leader or senior.

Why do people ask for
principle
developers?

App Engine from Scratch

2009-10-07T22:24:00.000-07:00

I decided to see how easy it was to deploy an app engine project without reading all the documentation.
I already have the Google plugin for Eclipse.
So I created a new default Google Java application project for GWT and AppEngine, changed the greeting service to reverse a String. Very stupid app, just for testing purposes.

Did have to ask a couple of questions, trying the experiment of NOT reading any documentation.
OK so:
1. Sign up for app engine.
2. Give them your cell phone number.
3. Get an SMS message back.
4. Enter it.
5. Create your application URL at https://appengine.google.com/
5 1/2. Make SURE you put your application name IN your appengine-web.xml file. This is where I ran into a snag!
It will look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<appengine-web-app xmlns="http://appengine.google.com/ns/1.0">
<application>edsmiley666test</application>
<version>1</version>


<system-properties>
<property name="java.util.logging.config.file" value="WEB-INF/logging.properties"/>
</system-properties>
</appengine-web-app>

Yeah, App Engine needs to look at that to be able to deploy! Otherwise appengine says WTF is this and 403s you.

6. Click your little app engine icon to deploy. It will grind away like this:
Compiling module geek.Edsappenginedemo
Compiling 6 permutations
Permutation compile succeeded
Linking into C:\eclipse3.4\workspace\edsappenginedemo\war
Link succeeded
Compilation succeeded -- 24.149s
Creating staging directory
Scanning for jsp files.
Scanning files on local disk.
Initiating update.
Cloning 31 static files.
Cloning 51 application files.
Uploading 26 files.
Uploaded 6 files.
Uploaded 12 files.
Uploaded 18 files.
Uploaded 24 files.
Deploying new version.
Will check again in 1 seconds
Closing update: new version is ready to start serving.
Uploading index definitions.
Deployment completed successfully

The app itself, which is not worth looking at is at http://edsmiley666test.appspot.com/.
Each deployed version gets a subdomain of it, e.g. http://1.latest.edsmiley666test.appspot.com/

October GTUG

2009-10-07T22:20:00.000-07:00

SV-GTUG Tonight: App Engine 1.2.5 release.
October Meeting: App Engine 1.2.5 Coding Session Oct 7 Wed 6:00 PM
Where? Googleplex (Bldg. 43) 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Tunis Conference Room Mountain View, CA 94043

...
blogging live from october sv-gtug

It’s a nice cozy group here, and several Santa Cruzans are here as well.
(Maybe the “write code” pared it down somewhat.)

So just finished off my ginormous burrito and diet coke.
Just learned about a framework for Groovy on AppEngine.

My Guice Presentation

2009-09-09T22:15:00.000-07:00

My presentation

Attention is so short, I thought that there was room for a really really “KISS” dead simple presentation on Guice, so I tried to restrict it to 12 slides and a “hello world” type application. I figure if you “get” IoC, not just as a way to get “Spring” on your resume, you’ll get the basics from it and then move on to the grown up stuff.

Eclipse Day At Googleplex 2009

2009-09-09T22:12:00.000-07:00

Conference I recently attended.

SLIDES AND VIDEO AT:
Eclipse Day At Googleplex 2009 – Eclipsepedia.

Eclipse in the Enterprise: Lessons from Google – Terry Parker, Google & Robert Konigsberg, Google
Developing DSLs with Eclipse – Peter Friese, itemis
OSGi for Eclipse Developers – Chris Aniszczyk, EclipseSource
Developing for Android with Eclipse – Xavier Ducrohet, Google
Distributed OSGi in the Eclipse Runtime Project – Scott Lewis, EclipseSource
Deploying Successful Enterprise Tools – Joep Rottinghuis, eBay
Build and Provision: Two Sides of the Coin We Love to Hate – Ed Merks, Eclipse Modeling Framework Lead
Google Plugin for Eclipse: Not Just for Newbies Any More – Miguel Méndez, Google

Review: Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature"

2009-08-06T22:05:00.000-07:00

Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature by Marcus du Sautoy

This book is really awesome and goes into a mathemetician's private obsession and delight in symmetry and the drama of the pursuit of a complete catalog of all symmetry types. The Moorish tiles in the Alhambra, the packing of spheres in the 24th dimension, error detection and correction codes, all are connected.

This has about the best explanation for the math loving quasi-layman of the Monster symmetry which emerges from the depths of the 196833rd dimension.

An object with rotations for this symmetry group needs 196833 dimensions to construct....

Yes, 196,833.... (The sphere packing solution, the so called Leech lattice, and the EDECs are all there for the taking in the 24th dimension, just to give you a sense of proportion.)

Um oddly if you add one to the dimensionality IT JUST SO HAPPENS to appear as a coefficient associated with the modular function, and the NEXT ONE is can be formed with this and other dimensionalities in which it occurs by a trivial bit of arithmetic and so on. Now this function connects to Wiles proof of Fermat's last theorem, and this symmetry is starting to show up in string theory--and essentially IT IS IN THE MIDDLE OF EVERYTHING.

(The monster group is the highest order sporadic group . It has group order, well, too long to type out.)

Well, this book was so fascinating I couldn't put it down (and I am rereading parts of it.) Of course your mileage my differ, but I enjoyed it a lot.

View all my reviews >>